About The Time We Were Leaving England The Job Of
Remodeling And Beautifying The Front Elevation Of Buckingham Palace
Reached Its Conclusion, And A Dinner Was Given To The Workingmen
Who For Some Months Had Been Engaged On The Contract.
It had been
expected that the occasion would be graced by the presence of Their
Majesties; but the king,
As I recall, was pasting stamps in the
new album the Czar of Russia sent him on his birthday, and the
queen was looking through the files of Godey's Lady's Book for the
year 1874, picking out suitable costumes for the ladies of her
court to wear. At any rate they could not attend. Otherwise,
though, the dinner must have been a success. Reading the account
of it as published next morning in a London paper, I learned that
some of the guests, "with rare British pluck," wore their caps and
corduroys; that others, "with true British independence," smoked
their pipes after dinner; that there was "real British beef" and
"genuine British plum pudding" on the menu; and that repeatedly
those present uttered "hearty British cheers." From top to bottom
the column was studded thick with British thises and British thats.
Yet the editorial writers of that very paper are given to frequent
and sneering attacks on the alleged yellowness and the boasting
proclivities of the jingo Yankee sheets; also, they are prone to
spasmodic attacks on the laxity of our marriage laws. Perhaps
what they say of us is true; but for unadulterated nastiness I
never saw anything in print to equal the front page of a so-called
sporting weekly that circulates freely in London, and I know of
nothing to compare with the brazen exhibition of a certain form
of vice that is to be witnessed nightly in the balconies of two
of London's largest music halls. It was upon the program of another
London theater that I came across the advertisement of a lady
styling herself "London's Woman Detective" and stating, in so many
words, that her specialties were "Divorce Shadowings" and "Secret
Inquiries." Maybe it is a fact that in certain of our states
marriage is not so much a contract as a ninety-day option, but the
lady detective who does divorce shadowing and advertises her
qualifications publicly has not opened up her shop among us.
In the campaign to give the stay-at-home Englishman a strange
conception of his American kinsman the press is ably assisted by
the stage. In London I went to see a comedy written by a deservedly
successful dramatist, and staged, I think, under his personal
direction. The English characters in the play were whimsical and,
as nearly as I might judge, true to the classes they purported to
represent. There was an American character in this piece too - a
multimillionaire, of course, and a collector of pictures - presumably
a dramatically fair and realistic drawing of a wealthy, successful,
art-loving American. I have forgotten now whether he was supposed
to be one of our meaty Chicago millionaires, or one of our oily
Cleveland millionaires, or one of our steely Pittsburgh millionaires,
or just a plain millionaire from the country at large; and I doubt
whether the man who wrote the lines had any conception when he did
write them of the fashion in which they were afterward read.
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